Normal maps hate me - please help
Okay so I've been at this all day. I'm at the end of my tether - ready to pull hair out.
After having numerous issues I finally managed to get an almost perfect bake for my model. However, one part of the bake wasn't quite right so I went back to add some geo to support the normal map. This is where everything went wrong.
I detached the part I wanted to modify, changed it, and added it to both the mesh and the cage. This gave me issues with not matching topo (same vert count, read something about vertex order or something?).
Anyway so I start again building my cage for the hundredth time today, and now all my bakes come out below. Just totally broken. I'm not doing anything different. Just exporting the cage from the projection modifier, using the push modifier and moving verts around.
Anyone able to help me? If not I'm going to take up drinking.
After having numerous issues I finally managed to get an almost perfect bake for my model. However, one part of the bake wasn't quite right so I went back to add some geo to support the normal map. This is where everything went wrong.
I detached the part I wanted to modify, changed it, and added it to both the mesh and the cage. This gave me issues with not matching topo (same vert count, read something about vertex order or something?).
Anyway so I start again building my cage for the hundredth time today, and now all my bakes come out below. Just totally broken. I'm not doing anything different. Just exporting the cage from the projection modifier, using the push modifier and moving verts around.
Anyone able to help me? If not I'm going to take up drinking.
Replies
Edit: Just baked it in xnormal, much more reasonable result. However because I was baking using material IDs things are baking onto places they shouldn't. I know I could explode the bake but really I'd like to find out why max isn't working. Plus that'd mean doing the cages for each part all over again :poly127:
I'm currently exploding the mesh and moving the highpoly to match (tedious...)
But really I want my software to work...
Edit: Seems it doesn't like pushing multiple sub-objects at once. Weird...
Anyone able to offer any advice at all on my Max problem?
Second, since your trouble seems to have started when you added more Geo, and since you're baking with material IDs, you should make sure that the new Geo inherited the previous mat-IDs. Just go in and double check your smoothing groups and your material IDs, as well as the usual reset xforms and whatnot. Also, I find it useful in these situations to add an Edit Poly modifier on top of the stack and collapsing it. This seems to force Max to rebuild the mesh, and it helps me solve weird shit quite often.
Another thing is that because of how the stack works, if you already had a projection modifier at the top of the stack, and then you added more geo at the bottom of the stack, there's a solid chance it'll ruin the vertex-order of the projection cage. You should try to redo the projection cage real quick and see the result. If it's more or less fine, then that's what happened.
Good luck.
No such things as too much edge padding, its a ridiculous sentiment.
When doing the exploding, you should keyframe your objects. Object mode for highpoly peices) and vertex mode fro lowpoly pieces select by "element" in edit poly). Then add a keyframe at frame 0, and one at frame 10.
If you're exporting to XN or something else move your exploded bits at frame 0(it will default to exporting frame 0). Otherwise you can move them at frame 10 or whatever.
This will allow you to quickly switch back and forth between exploded and normal, and your cage will be properly exploded without any extra work. Just make sure to remember to bake from the exploded state.
Once your exploded keyframes are set up you can do simple tweaks on your lowpoly mesh like edit smoothing groups etc, and not have to worry about having two copies of the mesh or redoing cages or anything like that.
It seems somewhere along the line ALL of my material IDs got wiped. Not sure how. Perhaps when attaching meshes.
Regarding keyframing, what do you mean object/vertex mode? I've not done any animation in max before so I'm not sure of the difference. And it wasn't so much the work to create the cage (I made a copy of the lowpoly, exploded it, and made a cage from that). But rather the work to realign the high and low poly, as I had the low poly as one mesh but the high as multiple meshes. Meaning I'd have to separate each piece, centre the pivot, and align it with the moved highpoly...
A. When you select an object, add some keyframes, and move it, you're keyframing the object
B. When you select a sub-object, like vert or element, you're keyframing by verts.
Moving:
Well the thing to do is use numeric move and move in easy to remember units, like move it 5 units or something. You shouldn't be manually lining the high and low back up by eye, thats going to result in problems.
Edge padding won't overlap other edge padding, it will just meet in the middle.